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Text File | 1996-11-05 | 14.5 KB | 364 lines

Data File Editor for Football Fanatic 1. Intro 2. Structure 2.1 Files 2.2 Team Data File Structure 3. Creating your own data files 3.1 Terminology 3.2 Setup 4. Editing 4.1 Loading/Saving 4.2 Main Menu 4.3 League Settings 4.4 Teams 4.5 Players 4.6 Names File 5. Team Selection 5.1 Selecting Category 5.2 Deleting a team 5.3 Sorting List 6. Other Files 7. Additional notes 1. Introduction The data file editor allows you to create or edit data files to your liking. Adding teams, removing teams, editing players and more all can be done using this editor. We tried to make this as simple as possible, but it may take a while for you to get used to using the editor. We recommend you take the time to go through this document. When editing files keep in my mind that those files won't be eligible for the creation of the summary file after the 35th season. Only the files supplied by Thunderbear will produce the summary file. The editor will also allow you to edit the OLD.CON and OLD.TEA files which were supplied with Footy, but as soon as you edit them, the game will not accept as them as the originals. 2. STRUCTURE AND OPTIONS Football Fanatic uses a variety of files. Five of there are user-definable and are involved in the workings of new scenarios or new data files. Three of which you alter using this editor. 2.1 FILES There are five important files in Football Fanatic: 1) Configuration Files (*.CON, ex: DEFAULT.CON) These files contain the main set-up of the game: division names, the cup names, the starting season and more. *.CON files can be edited. 2) Team Files (*.TEA, ex: DEFAULT.TEA) These files contain all the teams in Football Fanatic. Player data and team specifics are all included here. *.TEA files can be edited. 3) Names (*.NAM, ex: DEFAULT.NAM) This file contains all the names that are going to be used to computer-generated players in the game. *.NAM files can be edited. 4) Staff Names (*.STA, ex: DEFAULT.STA) This file contains all the names that are going to be used in Football Fanatic for staff members in all the teams. *.STA files should not be edited. 5) Referee Names (*.REF, ex: DEFAULT.REF) All the referee names used in the game and their respective nationalities are in this file. *.REF files should not be edited. 2.2 TEAM DATA FILE STRUCTURE Valid team data files must include a minimum of 84 teams. They must be distributed in three different categories: Top 48 teams, Other teams and international teams. The data file cannot hold more than 255 teams. There are three categories which you to assign the teams in. 1) Top 48 Teams. These teams will be placed in the top three divisions at the start of the game. This file MUST contain 48 teams, no more, no less. 2) Other Teams These teams will make up the pool of 16 teams that are chosen at random to fill the last division. There must be at least 32 teams in this category and a maximum of 183. 3) International Teams The term "international" in this case means "foreign". These teams will only be used for World Club Cup games. You must have at least 4 teams in this category, and a maximum of 24. 3. Creating your own data files 3.1 Terminology - Note the difference between scenario and data file. 1) Scenario A scenario consists of 5 custom files: the configuration file, the team file, the names file, the staff file and the referee file. An example is the DEFAULT.* file collection which contains the scenario of the European Football League season 1996/1997. 2) Data File A data file at its minimum only needs the configuration file and the team file. An example would be OLD.CON and OLD.TEA files which contain the information for the European Football League season 1995/1996. The missing files would be replaced by the DEFAULT collection. 3.2 Setup When Football Fanatic starts a new game it will look for files with the CON extension. If it does find such a file it will look for its namesake, but with the TEA extension. These are the two files it needs to load a different data file. It will also the corresponding names file, staff file and referee file if they exist. In order to be able to play your own data files you must have CON and TEA file with the same name. It will then display this new data file or scenario when you start a new game. Naming the files is very important! If you are creating a data file with only french teams make sure that you give the CON and TEA files the same name, otherwise Football Fanatic will think that they are unrelated. You might name them FRANCE.CON and FRANCE.TEA, or FRENCH.CON and FRENCH.TEA . 4. Editing Whenever you are not sure what to do press F1 for some quick help. 4.1 When you start the game you will be asked which CON, TEA and NAM file you which to load. If you wish to create a new file, we suggest you start by loading the DEFAULT group of files. When saving you can select which files you wish to save by toggling its entry with the space and entering the name in the appropriate field. The game will not allow you to save the files with the name DEFAULT. Save your work often. If you wish to load a new file, you'll have to exit and restart the Programm and select the files you wish to edit. 4.2 Main Menu From the main menu you have six options: 1) Edit Teams This option allows you to edit everything possible about the teams. 2) Insert Team Here you can add a new team 3) Edit League Various setting for the league can be altered and edited here 4) Select Teams Gives you an overview of all teams currently in the team file 5) Edit Names File Allows you to edit all names contained in the data file 6) Save Files 4.3 League settings The league settings are broken down in three options. You will be presented by a menu prompting you to select your choice or return to the main menu. 4.3.1 Edit Names Here you can alter the federation's name, the names of all four divisions, the names of all four cups, the venues and size of all four cup finals. 4.3.2 Edit Options Here you can modify the colours used with each one of the four division, the Other teams and the International teams. The starting year of the league can also be edited. There are also four options which allow you to modify the starting settings of the game, such as the number of imports allowed, the setting of the third cup, penalty kicks and if there is a common winter break for teams. 4.3.3 Edit Countries You can specify at the start which nationalities will be considered domestic in the game. Use the Up/Down cursor keys to select the country, to delete a country press Delete, and to insert a country press Insert. You can specify a maximum of 50 countries. 4.4 Edit Team In this option you'll be presented with a listing of the team's players and various information about the team itself. A team may only contain a maximum of 21 players. Keys: Page Up/Down - change team Cursor Up/Down - select player Enter - Edit player T - edit team information F3 - sort squad by position F4 - delete player F5 - add a goalkeeper F6 - add a defender F7 - add a midfielder F8 - add a forward 1 to 9 - assign player a random rating (1-high, 9-low) (MIGHT WANT TO MAKE 9 HIGH) 4.4.1 Editing the team The following can be edited: Team Name Coach Name Stadium Name Stadium Size (left/right Cursor keys) Formation (11 formations, left/right cursor keys) Country Fan support (0 to 100%, left/right cursor keys) Category Ranking (used for Top 48 teams only) 4.5 Edit Player The following can be edited: Player Name Country Age (16 to 45, 77=randomly assigned) Position (goalkeeper, defender, midfielder and striker) Mental Skills - 0 to 9 (highest), includes skills such as experience, leadership, creativity, confidence and hardness Physical Skills - 0 to 9 (highest), includes skills such as speed, strength, stamina, shotpower, clearing and heading Technical Skills - 0 to 9 (highest), includes skills such as goalkeeping, tackling, marking, passing, accuracy and ball control Offset - 10 to -10 . Used to make players very good or very bad. Should be left at 0. Personality - 0 to 9. 0 is the dream player, cooperative and grateful. 9 is an egomaniac. Special - special attributes for the player: slow, quick, agressive, weak, strong, veteran, scorer, blocker and tireless. 4.6 EDIT FILE NAMES FILE Here you edit the names file according to each nationality. IMPORTANT NOTE: this file is always automatically saved!! If you wish to create a new file, then you must copy an existing file to a new one. You will not be able to save the file under a different name while using the editor. Use cursor keys to select country. Press Delete to delete an entry, Insert to insert a new country. To edit names, select the country by pressing Enter. You will be presented with a list of up to 4,000 names. Press Enter to edit a names, Delete to delete it and insert to insert a new name. NOTE: If you a have lot of teams from one particular country then make sure you have about 25 names in the names file for each team. This is to avoid repetition. For most European countries the DEFAULT.DAT file has an average of 250 names. The game does not recycle names in the team file. 5. SELECT TEAMS This option gives you an overview of all teams in the teams file. It will show the name, their nationality, their stadium, the number of players in the team and the category. At the bottom of the screen it shows how many teams are in each category. Cursor/Page Up/Down Scrolls through the teams. 5.1. EDITING CATEGORIES Press Enter, you will be presented with a menu with four options. Select the category for the team (see section 2.2). 5.2 DELETING A TEAM Press Delete to remove a team from the team file. Make sure you know what you are doing as there is no "undelete" function. 5.3 SORTING TEAMS F5 - sort teams by alphabetical order F6 - sort teams by nationality F7 - sort teams by category F8 - sort teams by assigned ranking (and category) NOTE: In order for the team file to work properly the teams must be sorted by assigned ranking (F8) 7. OTHER FILES There are other files which can be edited by using a normal ASCII text editor such as DOSEDIT. Referee files - The first line in the file contains the number of referees in the file. Make sure it is equal or less than the actual number contained. After that the name and nationality of each referee appear each on a separate line. Staff file - Alternating one line contains the name of the staff member and the other line his code: 1- head/assistant coach 2- reserve/youth coach 3- medic 4- scout NOTE: there should be twice as many reserve/youth coaches as medics, scouts or assistant coaches. YOUTH.DAT file - this file contains a list of teams that are used by the game when new players are generated. The first line of the document contains the number of teams in the file. PAPER.DAT file - contains headlines for one of the newspapers in Football Fanatic. The number of headlines must be a multiple of 32, ex: 32, 64, 96, etc ... first line contains the number of headlines. 7. ADDITIONAL NOTES Only scenarios or data files supplied by Thunderbear Software Creations allow the game to create the summary file at the end of the 35th season. This was done to keep things fair among all players. Make sure you sort the teams by ranking before saving and using the file. The game may have some problems if the teams in all categories are mixed up. We suggest you delete teams that aren't used. Again this may cause some problems with the game. If you are experiencing memory problems run Football Fanatic with the following parameters: ff memlow This will reduce the maximum number of teams in Football Fanatic to 150. Make sure you use a team file with 150 teams or less. ff verylow This will reduce the maximum number of teams in Football Fanatic to 150. Make sure you use a team file with 100 teams or less, but the team file must have at least 32 Other teams. Trying to edit any of the data files with an hex-editor or hacking is not a very good idea. Checksums are well placed (and hidden) in all of the files. We will be releasing in the future (around February) an update to this editor. It won't be a file editor but a scenario editor. It will be much more flexible and a few more options are available. We were considering adding the one we used, but somehow a collection of 5 very badly designed programs along with a dozen spreadsheets would not make things any easier for people.